Betting on Hope

Chapter 7



Refreshed and relaxed from a vigorous hour with a personal trainer followed by a ninety-minute hot stone and aromatherapy massage and a soothing eucalyptus sea salt body wrap and exfoliation, Marilyn Saladino stepped into the elevator at ten-thirty on Sunday morning feeling in need of breakfast. Although the trainer had advised a wheatgrass smoothie enhanced with probiotics for her first meal, Marilyn was thinking more along the lines of bacon and eggs. There was nothing like protein for long-lasting energy.

The Desert Dunes casino was almost quiet, and the elevators that served the upper suites for special guests were empty, except for one young woman who got off as Marilyn got on. The blonde was wearing a pair of white Capri pants so tight they looked like they’d been sprayed on, with a bright turquoise and yellow print blouse tied at her navel. Her fingernails and toenails were painted tangerine, she wore big, colorful earrings, she had a hat, she had a bag, she wore little mules with clear plastic high heels.

Marilyn sighed as the young woman stepped off. What she wouldn’t do to have that kind of figure again. That hair. That complexion. The young woman was a tramp, of course. Only someone who was looking for a sugar daddy would dye her hair that color and wear her clothes that tight. But Marilyn knew from bitter experience that men loved such brazen flaunting. Just weeks ago she’d learned that her own husband had had a fling with just such a hussy. Of course Marilyn had put a stop to that. But Big Julie had been so—

Marilyn slammed her hand between the elevator doors just as they were about to close and forced them apart. Just how many high-roller suites did the casino have? And what were the odds that a blonde tramp was there with someone else? Marilyn felt the seeds of suspicion grow. Had she really succeeded in halting Big Julie’s little fling? If he’d brought his tart to Vegas instead of her, his lawful, loving wife, she was going to kill him.

She hesitated for just a second. And then she took off after the blonde. She’d never seen the floozy Big Julie had been keeping out at the golf course, but the private detective she’d hired had taken some pictures. The image of the tart was grainy, but Marilyn had recognized her loving spouse when he was in flagrante delicto. Or even when his delicto was not so flagrante, as had been the situation last night. Last night, his delicto had practically gone into hiding, and after Marilyn had put all that effort into coaxing it out, too.

But Big Julie’s delicto had been flagrante enough for the blonde in the photos, and here was a blonde again. Even as Marilyn trailed after the woman in the white Capri pants, she realized that she might have overreacted. America was full of bottle blondes, and they probably weren’t all sleeping with Big Julie. Some of them probably just happened to be staying at the Desert Dunes when Big Julie was and happened to come down the same elevator he used and it didn’t mean a thing, even if she looked more or less exactly like the grainy photo of the blonde at the golf course.

The blonde turned into a dress shop and, with no hesitation whatsoever, Marilyn followed her in. The blonde tart at the golf course had never seen Marilyn, would have no idea what she looked like. Marilyn wasn’t worried.

Marilyn browsed jewelry while the blonde browsed clothes in sizes Marilyn hadn’t seen in twenty years, finally taking a few outfits into a fitting room and trying them on. Just as Marilyn thought she couldn’t pretend for one more second to be deciding between pairs of rhinestone bangles, the blonde decided on an outfit and took it to the register.

“Charge it to room sixteen-oh-one,” she said.

Sixteen-oh-one, Marilyn realized, was the penthouse directly above hers. Hers and Big Julie’s.

The blonde signed, the clerk smiled, stapled the receipt, closed the bag, and handed it to the woman, who sashayed past Marilyn and went back the way she’d come. Smiling at the clerk, Marilyn followed her out of the store and watched her head back to the elevator banks.

But instead of following her, Marilyn turned to the right and went to the line of house phones across from the concierge desk. She picked up a phone and an operator came on.

“Can you tell me which room Julie Saladino is in?” she asked the operator.

“I yam sorree,” said the operator. “I yam not allowed to give out that informayshun.”

“Please connect me to sixteen-oh-one,” Marilyn said, expecting the worst.

The phone rang.

“Yeah,” Drake answered.

Marilyn thought that at ten-thirty in the morning, Big Julie would still be lying snoring on the big king bed in fifteen-oh-one where she’d left him. But she could still find out if he was registered with the blonde in sixteen-oh-one and with herself one floor below.

Marilyn clenched her teeth and spoke through them, hoping to disguise her voice. “Can I pleazhe zhpeak to Big Chulie?”

“He’s not here,” Drake said. “Who’s this?”

“I’ll call back.” Marilyn hung up.

So. Her lousy, two-timing creep of a husband had not only lied to her about dumping that tramp, she was here in Vegas! Staying with her husband! In the suite directly above hers!

All thoughts of bacon and eggs, not to mention wheatgrass and probiotics, fled her mind as Marilyn stormed back to the elevators and viciously stabbed the call button. When the elevator doors opened, Marilyn leaped in, jabbing the button for the fifteenth floor. As Marilyn gnashed her teeth, the doors closed majestically, in their own time, and the car rose. By the time the doors finally opened on the fifteenth floor, Marilyn was in a frenzy. She slashed her access card through the key slot and flung herself into the suite, barreling through the rooms until she got to the bedroom, where Big Julie lay in semi-naked sonambulance.

“You big—big—jerk!” Marilyn yelled, not finding a word bad enough to call her life’s mate.

“Wha—?” big Julie said, struggling to sit up. “What’s the matter, Baby?” And then realizing who he was talking to, added, too late, “Marilyn. Sweetheart.”

Marilyn picked up the lamp from the side table. “You lying—” she heaved the lamp at him, “cheating—” she picked up the clock radio, “two-timing—” threw it at him, “scum!” She picked up a small vase holding an artificial flower arrangement and held it before her, vibrating in fury.

“You brought that tramp out here! You’ve been staying with her upstairs! Don’t deny it! I saw her!” She pitched the flower vase at him, looking for something else to throw.



Big Julie had dodged the lamp purely by instinct and had fully awakened by the time the clock radio whizzed by his head. Training and experience kicked in, and he watched his spouse warily, ducking flying objects as they smashed on the wall behind him. Marilyn had lousy aim, but if she hit him she could do some damage. He didn’t want to get hurt—especially not if injuries to sensitive parts of his anatomy cut into his time with Baby.

But what a throw! Marilyn was putting a lot of force behind her delivery, and if she wasn’t getting results, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Her skin was flushed from the effort. A deep V of sweat stained the front of her leotard. Her pink athletic socks sagged around her ankles, her carefully tinted red hair escaped its pony tail and flew around her head. She was pulsating with fury.

“Now, Marilyn,” Big Julie wheedled, evading the flying flower arrangement. “Sweetheart.”

“Don’t ‘Sweetheart’ me,” Marilyn yelled.

Big Julie was getting turned on by all of Marilyn’s passion and sweat. Not to mention the way the edge of the exercise leotard bit into the curve of her ass. If it was one thing he liked, it was a passionate woman, and Marilyn, okay, she was meaty, but her curves still had plenty of velocity, and she was wearing a skin-tight leotard, her nipples showing through it like hard little points on a pencil. Her rump was quivering, her thighs were trembling, and best of all, there were damn few elastic polymers in sight. A woman in full bounce was a glorious thing.

Marilyn picked up the bedside phone and pulled her arm back, ready to throw.

Big Julie hadn’t been married for twenty-five years and been a made guy for the same without learning something about self-preservation. He rolled out of bed away from Marilyn’s aim and thundered around the end of the bed. Marilyn dropped the phone and turned to run, but Big Julie tackled her, flinging her onto the bed and jumping on top of her. Marilyn tried to knee him in the balls, but Big Julie was ready for that, clamping her legs with his and grabbing the one hand of Marilyn’s he could reach. She swacked him on the head with the other, but she didn’t do much damage because his head was plenty hard and now he was getting hard elsewhere, too, which also was a glorious thing.

Marilyn pulled back in shock and then struggled harder, but Big Julie grasped Marilyn’s sweat-soaked boob with his hand and pinched her nipple. It gave him a nice rush, not as nice as Baby, but still really, really good, and when he realized that he couldn’t get his hand inside the leotard, he grabbed it by the neck and yanked, tearing it open and leaving exposed a naked breast the size of a small cantaloupe.

He gazed at it, feeling his breath quicken. Marilyn’s boobs weren’t anything like Baby’s. Baby’s firm titties stood up straight when she was on her back, thanks to surgical intervention, but Marilyn’s exposed breast slid sideways on her chest. It was bigger and pinker than Baby’s and a lot softer. He put his hand on it and molded it, seeing how her generous flesh swelled out from between his fingers as he squeezed.

Marilyn had stopped struggling and was staring at him in shock but not horror, her breath coming in shallow gasps, the skin on her chest rosy with exertion and extra blood flow. Big Julie took note of the change in posture, activity level, breathing, and speech, and took advantage, settling himself more comfortably and letting her know with other movements just how vigorous and refreshed he was feeling this morning after a good night’s sleep. In a very short time, he had the satisfaction of seeing Marilyn’s eyes close. She sighed—a melting sigh—and when her back arched, Big Julie smiled in satisfaction, knowing that he was about to enjoy a very nice marital workout.



Some time later, Marilyn got up to take a shower, careful not to wake her spouse, who was gently snoring. Her hair was a mess. She had beard burn on her chest. But she felt great. Her skin tingled. Her thighs throbbed with a gentle ache she hadn’t felt in months, if not years. Her vagina hummed. Every nerve ending sat up and saluted.

She stepped under the warm water, bathing quickly and washing her hair. When she got out, she combed her hair and put on one of the bathrobes that the hotel thoughtfully provided its guests before she went back into the bedroom to dress. When she stepped into the luxurious space, now strewn with discarded athletic clothing, Big Julie was awake and watching her. She felt the hum escalate to a full choir belting out the Hallelujah Chorus.



Big Julie watched Marilyn come back from the bathroom, her wet hair hanging in dark hanks around her shoulders. The bulky white bathrobe was crossed tightly over her chest and knotted around her middle. Marilyn right out of the shower looked nothing like the hot, ferocious, no-holds-barred, wild woman whose clothes Big Julie had torn off just a short time ago. She looked, in fact, like the Pillsbury dough boy if the Pillsbury dough boy had fallen into the dishwasher and survived the pot-scrubbing cycle.

“Julie,” Marilyn said. Her eyelids drooped as she looked him over, but her mouth looked good, soft and slightly swollen. “We should do that more often. Way more often.”

Big Julie felt his heart sink. Under the best of circumstances, like say if Baby was wearing her black leather chaps and spurs and riding him harder than a cowgirl in a rodeo barrel racing competition, he could go two full rounds before he was knocked out. But with Marilyn looking like Mortitia dragged from a lake, he was done.

“That was great, honey!” he said, trying for enthusiasm. He jumped out of bed and pulled on his shorts. “I could eat a bear after that. What do you want for breakfast? They got everything here.”

Marilyn turned to the dresser, disappointed, and pulled open the bottom drawer.

“Whatever you’re having is fine,” she said, pawing through her clothes. “Eggs, maybe. Coffee.”

Big Julie grabbed the phone that Marilyn hadn’t thrown at him to call in the order, but when he looked up to ask Marilyn when should they bring it, he stopped. Marilyn was still bent over the drawer. The bathrobe was clinging to her butt and stuck between her thighs. He remembered once with Baby in and out of the hot tub, when her robe had been sticking just like that. And that hadn’t been once with Baby so much as three times, he’d been so damn hot for her, what with the water and everything.

Just thinking about Baby and the hot tub, he felt himself stir underneath the shorts.

Marilyn’s bathrobe gapped at the chest, and Big Julie could see a curve of breast. It looked nothing like one of Baby’s tits, which were round like halves of a baseball, big and symmetrical. When Big Julie rubbed his face on them, it was like his nose was gliding over a ski jump covered with soft, new snow, they were so firm but her skin was so delicate. When Marilyn was bending over, though, her tits looked more like Japanese eggplants, full, but more oblong. Except Marilyn’s tits weren’t purple like Japanese eggplants.

He imagined his face buried in the valley of Baby’s perfect tits. He could just about smell the new snow now, his tongue reaching out to catch a fresh snowflake.

“Open your bathrobe a little,” Big Julie said, his voice husky. “Let me see you more.”

Marilyn blushed. “You are bad, Big Julie,” she said, but she loosened the tie on her bathrobe and pulled on the crossover fabric. She glanced at him, at the ski pole in his shorts.

“Bend over like that again,” Big Julie asked. “Like you were. I like to look at you like that.”

“I think you’re ready to do a little more than just look, Julie,” Marilyn said, crossing over to the bed.

Big Julie thought about ski slopes and watched Marilyn approach, his eyes half-closed.

“Oh, Baby,” he said. “I am ready to jump.”